The One He Needed Least
by SongBirdie
Summary: Winner of the "The Female of the Species" challenge on NFA. Excerpt: He only had one child that remained of his deadly trio, though. The one he would honestly sacrifice first if he had had the chance to choose.


The One He Needed Least

Author's Note: This story is the winner of "The Female of the Species" Challenge on NFA.

Thanks to Satan-Wears-Prada for her help beta-ing, love you!

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS; it is the property of its respective creators.

Eli David expected only the best from his children. They had to be the toughest, smartest, deadliest, among the best of the best. He would not tolerate anything else. He only had one child that remained of his deadly trio, though. The one he would honestly sacrifice first if he had had the chance to choose.

Ari had been the perfect assassin; deadly, cunning, never feeling guilt. He had worked hard to make sure the last happened. That had come back to bite them both in the end. Ari's lack of a conscience had made him reckless, made him think he was invincible, and cost him his life, and his father his spy in Hamas, and of course his son.

Ah, Talia, sweet, sweet, Talia. She had been such a kind soul, so kind that he had seriously doubted her ability to be an efficient agent. As it were, a Hamas bombing killed her right before her training was to begin. She had been the light in his dark world, his little angel, the baby of the family. It still boggled his mind that she was the first of the two of his three children to die, and, by terrorists no less. He had always thought she would be immune to their world of violence and death, but she had tried to make him proud by serving her country, and it cost her the one life she had to give.

Ziva, his middle child, his fierce little warrior, his only remaining child. Ari had been the most useful to him, his only son; Talia the most compassionate, his baby girl; and then there was Ziva. She had worked her whole life to please him, done anything he had asked of her, and it had made her the perfect warrior, but that was never enough for him.

Ziva was a talented liar, spy, assassin, she was cunning, deadly, unflinching, a soul capable of the cruelest acts, and yet, deep inside all she really wanted was to have Daddy's approval, to belong to a family, to be loved in a way that her blood family had never truly fulfilled for her. And, he was glad that in a way she was lost, for emotions are weakness.

He had never allowed Ari a chance to have emotions; Talia had been so full so them they were impossible to expel from her and Ziva was stuck smack in the middle, an impossible place to be. She could be as cold as ice and as hot as fire, all depending on what was required of her at that moment.

Of his memoires of Ziva, the one that stood out the most in his mind showed just how deadly a warrior he had made out of her. In the weeks following Talia's death, Ziva had become consumed with the need for revenge against her sweet little sister's killers. She had spent every waking moment tracing the steps of the Hamas group, calling in favors with her contacts, and training for the meeting of vengeance.

While he himself had not been there when said meeting of vengeance accorded, he had heard first hand about the damage inflicted onto the Hamas cell responsible for all his family's heartache. He had conned the medical examiner, that did the autopsies, into telling him the injuries that had spelled out death for this particular Hamas group, and the list had been gruesome and lengthy from what little they still had to work with.

Shattered bones, being among them four broken collar bones, six broken arms, and a neck snapped clean off in one case, pressure points held until the point the skin had turned black and blue, knife wounds, some resulting in death, and other just adding to a list of pains, gunshots in the legs, heart, head, and in the case of the leader of the group, burned alive in a building that burned to the ground, destroying any evidence that was left behind. The authorities were never able to pinpoint that Ziva had been the murderer and executioner, though he knew they suspected her.

Ari later told him that Ziva had been missing in action for days before the attack. When she was still missing on the day marking the one month anniversary of Talia's death, Ari had gone looking for her; he then found the map to the cell in a pocket of her jeans, which he burned soon after reading. He had contacted his father as soon as he got in a two mile radius of the cell, and had seen the smoke.

Ari arrived just in time to pull Ziva out of the burning Hamas cell's headquarter, where she had been wildly enraged, beating the bodies of her sister's killers, and then turning completely hysterical in her brother's arms. Ari would later tell him she had sounded like a woman with her heart having the life taken from it. Ari had spirited them both away, taking her to his mother's house that he had inherited with her death.

Ziva was never the same after that mission of revenge, she became cold, part of her died with Talia. The only time there was any peace in her eyes was when she was with Ari. Ari stayed with her for every minute since that day. To his father, Eli, it was the only time there was anything resembling peace in his son's eyes.

As long as he could remember, his children only looked happy, he supposed he could use the word happy for their early years, when they were with each other. Ari had been the protector of the group, not the monster that he later became. Talia had been the one that could make them all laugh, that always seemed oblivious to the cruelness of the world. Ziva had been mother to Talia, because their real mother died so young, and friend and confident to Ari. She was alone now, the only one left, dimming the light in her eyes to the point of extinction.

Eli David took a sip of his drink and mentally flipped through the memories of his children he had in his mind. Memories kept hidden in the recesses of his mind, for the rare times like these that he let himself remember.

Ari, a mere babe in his arms, a look of pure innocence upon his face; Ari with bloody knuckles, grinning after winning his first fight; Ari at his graduation, smirking at his achievement, his arms around his sisters; and, the picture that always threatened to block out all the rest, the look on his face, in death, in his casket, the look of disbelief, anger, relief, telling that his nightmare of a life was finally over.

Talia, cradled in her mother's arms, happy even then; Talia at her first recital, dancing on-stage, just like her sister before her, smiling down at her father; the unmistakable pride on her face as she told him she had been accepted into the Israeli army; and the ashes that remained of her after the bombing.

And, then, there was Ziva, held limply in her mother's arms as she sobbed how sorry she was that she hadn't been able to bear Eli a son; the sound of Ziva's cries after his yelling at her for practicing her ballet, instead of her knife throwing; her searching the crowds for his face at her initiation to Mossad; and, the look of hatred on her face at her brother's funeral.

All in all, he had to say, he had created the perfect daughter, for she was nothing like him.

July 23, 2009  
Valerie Portolano


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